A picture is worth a thousand words. A streaming video is worth a lot of bandwidth, or is it? From Supreme Court of Canada live and archived webcasts to CanLII training videos on YouTube to political speeches, there is plenty of valid, useful, legal content on the web that is being blocked from viewing in an office near you.

A common argument used by organizations to support blocking streaming content is based on productivity drain, usually kicked around with the word bandwidth.

What is the bandwidth drain of streaming content? A service provider with the unlikely name of Bummer Hosting Solutions offers some handy streaming calculation charts.

Example: You’re giving a 10 minute streaming video for 10 people with 56K. Go to the 56k Chart and cross reference 10 minutes with 10 people for your answer.

Answer: Using the 56k Chart, it will take about 42 MB of bandwidth for your webcast.